Math class in the park

President Barack Obama returns to Columbus

View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoAdam Cairns | DISPATCH PHOTOSAbout 4,500 people turn out in Schiller Park to greet President Barack Obama on his latest foray into battleground Ohio, a state he won in 2008 and is crucial to his chances for re-election. After the park, Obama dropped in on an AFL-CIO meeting at the Renaissance Hotel.

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No matter how many more details Mitt Romney releases about his budget plan, President Barack
Obama assured a German Village audience yesterday that it still will be missing one key element:
arithmetic.

“You cannot make it work. You can’t cross the t’s and dot the i’s on this plan.

“And Columbus is a town where you got to dot the i,” said the president, showing the crowd of
about 4,500 he knows something about the tradition of Script Ohio.

Obama said Romney cannot cut trillions in federal taxes in the coming decade, add substantially
to military spending and not increase the deficit without making huge cuts in nondefense programs
or “sticking it to the middle class.”

“They must have skipped math class,” the president told an audience nestled under darkening
skies in a corner of Schiller Park more accustomed to dogs running loose and outdoor performances
of Shakespeare. “Every time they’re asked to explain this plan, they won’t explain it because they
can’t.”

Obama, citing what he said were independent researchers, said 95 percent of U.S. taxpayers would
have to pay more to fund Romney’s plan.

Just in case his listeners were more into Ohio State football than the university’s marching
band, Obama shifted analogies to the Horseshoe.

“Under my opponent’s tax plan, 106 fans at the game would get an average tax cut of $250,000,
and about 100,000 fans would have to pay for it. And by the way, the ones who would get the tax
breaks are the guys in the box seats.”

Chris Maloney, spokesman for the Romney campaign in Ohio, said, “President Obama has resorted to
recycling false and debunked attacks because he can’t sell Ohioans on his record of fewer jobs,
more debt and lower incomes. The president’s announcements today were predictable and indicative of
an administration whose governing philosophy is beholden to the rise and fall of battleground-state
polls.”

After his 39-minute speech, Obama went to a large white tent in the park for a
$10,000-per-person roundtable fundraiser, attended by about 25 people. The campaign said proceeds
will go to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee of Obama for America, the
Democratic National Committee and several state Democratic parties.

On his way to Rickenbacker Airport, the president made an impromptu stop Downtown at the 28th
Biennial Constitutional Convention of the Ohio AFL-CIO in the Renaissance Hotel.

He echoed a theme from his Schiller Park talk and an earlier campaign stop in Cincinnati about
cracking down on Chinese trade violations.

“We are going to keep on pressing to make sure that they are playing by the rules because my
attitude is the United States of America has the best workers on Earth,” he told the cheering union
members during his nine-minute talk.

Obama mocked Romney for saying he would be tough on China.

“I don’t think we can have a lot of confidence in, seven weeks before an election, he suddenly
says he wants to get tough on China, when his entire history has been feeling pretty comfortable
with seeing jobs shipped to China.”

The Obama campaign rolled out a new national ad yesterday riffing off a Romney commercial saying
it’s “time to stand up to the cheaters.” Yet when Obama added tariffs on China to save 1,000 U.S.
tire jobs, the former Massachusetts governor condemned the action as “bad for the nation and our
workers,” the ad says.

Yesterday, the Obama administration filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization accusing
China of illegally subsidizing exports of autos and auto parts, “a practice that is putting U.S.
auto-parts manufacturers at a competitive disadvantage and that is encouraging the outsourcing of
auto-parts production to China,” the White House said.

Senior administration officials vociferously denied the new case was timed to coincide with
Obama’s trip to Ohio, with one official saying they had “no knowledge of the president’s travel or
political strategy.”

“These cases take an extraordinary amount of time to prepare,” said one of the officials, who
spoke only on the condition he not be identified, in a press call. “We have been working on this
for a while.”

A trade complaint about China also was filed in early July, the day Obama visited three cities
in northern Ohio. Like now, word was leaked to an Ohio newspaper to generate publicity for the day
of the visit. And like now, top administration officials insisted there was no connection with the
campaign.

As the crowd filtered out of Schiller Park, a gray truck circled the block boasting American
flags, a Romney sticker in the window and a sign on the back: “Vote character not color.”

After the speech, Steven Ridgway, 31, said the trade filing is “our way of letting China know
that we’re not going to be pushed around.” The Bexley resident lived in China in 2005 and 2006 and
said Americans are “silly” to be afraid of China.

“We are in a global situation of the world where China and America have to learn to work
together instead of trying to be rivals in everything.”

Richard Sentieri, 69, also said he wasn’t sure how much the case would mean for Ohio.

“I suppose in the long run, if we get a few more jobs, that’s helpful, but I have no idea if
that’s going to be the result,” the Columbus resident said.